Toggle Menu
  1. Home/
  2. Brexit/

UK Parliamentarians discuss Brexit rebellion

50 views

After Michel Barnier’s uncompromising warning that UK cannot benefit from ‘friction-free’ access to the EU single market without membership, members of Parliament hold closed door meetings in Westminster to mobilise revolt against Hard Brexit.

Members of the UK Parliament are in closed door discussions to organise a series of cross party revolts against a series of legislative measures being introduced into the UK parliament next week to repeal the European Communities Act – the Act of Parliament that took the UK into the European Economic Community (later European Union) in 1973.

Since the recent General Election failed to give Theresa May the comfortable majority in Parliament that she needs to push through her uncompromising vision for Brexit backbench members of Parliament and the House of Lords are now more willing to use their votes to ensure that the UK stays within a free trade arrangment with the European Union.

loading...

It is well know that the vast majority of MPS have had deep concerns about Theresa May’s ‘no deal is better than a bad deal’ Lancaster House speech in which she set out her intention to ‘crash out’ of the European Union with no other trading relationships to rely on than the standard tariffs set by the World Trade Organisation. These terms represent a far tougher deal in terms of the UK’s access to the EU and global markets with tariff free access still to be negotiated with potential trading partners.

A former senior minister told the London Evening Standard that ‘Mrs May will realise how much things have changed when she starts losing amendments to the Repeal Bill’.

At present, the closed door meetings have consisted of Labour members of Parliament, but they are confident that Conservative backbenchers will be joining the revolt.

50 Labour members of Parliament recently rebelled against their party leadership to support an amendment proposed to the Queen’s speech by Chukka Umunna MP to allow for a soft Brexit.

Earlier today in a separate development, former Conservative Party leader and Foreign Secretary, William Hague has added his concerns about the UK’s standing and influence globally being decreased by its department from the influential Common Foreign and Security Policy committee of the EU. He suggested that the UK seeks a permanent membership of this committee post-Brexit due to its importance to its international standing. He says that this will ‘mitigate the damage that will undoubtedly be caused’.

Katherine Barfield

Loading...